


Beneath The Weirwood

by SecondFromTheRight



Series: Missing Scenes [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-23 19:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18708364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondFromTheRight/pseuds/SecondFromTheRight
Summary: She can’t be here, she can’t.She should be in the crypt, safe.Fight, determination,needthat he didn’t realise he had left throws him the last feet of distance between them until he’s close enough that he sees it really is her.Arya.Added 8x3 scene





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I expected this scene. When credits rolled I was like what, no? Like, fully expected it. Apparently enough that I had to write it to get it out of my head.
> 
> There will be a second chapter. I kept this one as I felt could have been in the show, and then the second continuing the scene in a way I personally could see it going, but not enough to expect it.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I changed one major thing. At least, I think I did.

With a heavy exhale through his nose, Jon makes himself move, now dodging the still bodies that lie everywhere as he tries to get to the Godswood.

Theon must have done it, he thinks, but what about Bran? Was Theon in time? Was Bran saved with the living?

He pushes his legs on, the rubble and the lying wights in heaps and the bodies of their dead making getting anywhere harder. The home he’s known is in ruins all around him; he watched so much of it fall and all he can hope is a Stark didn’t fall with it.

He finds himself coming to a halt the second he gets inside the Godswood as he sees the pile of wights on each side, a clear path between them and Jon knows without a doubt it was to allow the Night King through. They aisled him, to witness him bring the end to all things, the end of Bran. But they must have witnessed the Night King’s end instead, he thinks as he looks over them all. A body catches his eye, one out of line and alone and as he reaches it, he realises it’s Theon. Dead, the spear that killed him still lodged in his body.

Crouching down, he scans over Theon, his hand hovering above the Ironborn’s armour. He feels gratitude for the man he’d known through his life. He died protecting Bran. Did they take each other out, he wonders.

It’s silent, quieter than it has been all night, quieter than even the Godswood always is and it pounds in his head, heavy and deafening without any of the answers he needs. This isn’t over for him yet. He stands again, moving carefully as he tries to see through the haze of smoke and snow, the remains of fire and ice that’s enveloped all of Winterfell.

The lone still figure he sees is small enough to be Bran in his chair, small enough that surely it can only be Bran in his chair. With new energy, knowing Bran sitting in his chair doesn’t mean he’s alive, Jon hikes his legs and quickly moves again. The silhouette of the heart tree becomes visible through the smoke as he gets closer, and he realises it isn’t a lone figure after all – and it isn’t Bran. He can make out the square angles of Bran’s chair in the second figure he now sees, behind the first. Immediately he questions who stands at a similar height and he remembers Tyrion. The Lannister who can’t leave well enough alone and who always gets involved, believing in his ability to bring something different to the table.

Did he do this? It’s not possible, is it?

Jon knows there’s some kind of bond between Bran between Tyrion, a familiarity they formed a long time ago. Maybe Bran told him something he didn’t tell everyone else, some other part Tyrion had to play.

The lines of wights that fell when the Night King did finally end and he starts to see both Ironborn and the dead that the Ironborn must have taken down. They’re littered everywhere, circling the heart tree, in contrast to entrance. Again, he feels something for Theon, seeing how many wights they stopped getting to Bran, and how many of them died stopping those wights.

Bran and who he assumes to be Tyrion become aware of him, Tyrion turning as he nears them. As the figure shifts, Jon sees the clear line of a sword at the hip. A small, skinny thing he only knows is a sword and not a stick because he knows it so well, it’s something buried in the deepest parts of him that’s spread through him, representing so much of who he is, who he’s been, what he loves. With it, he remembers the other person who is that small besides Tyrion Lannister. But that figure has no association with the rest of what’s around them, with bodies and war and death. She can’t, he’s never allowed that mix in his mind because he doesn’t want her anywhere near any of it.

She can’t be here, she can’t.

She should be in the crypt, safe.

Fight, determination, _need_ that he didn’t realise he had left throws him the last feet of distance between them until he’s close enough that he sees it really is her.

Arya.

He stumbles to a stop once again, staring at her. She looks back at him with wide, confused eyes and he notices the blood on her temple that’s dripped down her face. Her hair is a mess, blood and dirt and whatever else covering her. It’s his little sister, he truly realises as he lets out a shuddering breath and gulps in another.

She doesn’t move, only stands and looks at him, her shoulders rising with her own breath. He feels stuck too. All the drive he had becoming fear as he looks back at her. With difficulty, he manages to make himself look behind her to Bran to see he is alive, he’s safe, and Jon doesn’t know how much Bran feels now, how much he can show, but there is nothing about his brother that looks surprised by Arya’s presence, or her state that shows she’s been fighting.

Turning back to her, he wonders if she just got here first. If she ran here from the crypt as soon as it was over – she was always fast. But just another quick look over her attire shows that’s not what’s happened, no matter how much he wants to believe it, no matter how much he wants to make it true. Jon knows what people look like after battle, and this is it. And then there’s the dagger still in her hand.

When he brings his eyes on her face again, she’s no longer looking at him, her eyes turned downward and her head bowed as she stands there.

The vulnerability she shows finally breaks him, encouraging him to close the final gap because he can’t see her like that and do nothing, he can’t stand there and see her like that, especially not because of _him_ , ashamed in front of _him_ , hiding from _him_.

He puts both hands on her shoulders, grounding himself to her as much as he can. He squeezes, pressing his fingers against her leather, making sure she is okay and she is there. Then leaning over some to match their height, slowly he goes up, a hand on her neck like he’s always done, connecting with _them_ , and his other touches lightly above the cut on her head. The way she only closes her eyes and doesn’t flinch worries him the most and somehow it’s the thing that makes him truly realise that she did this, she killed the Night King, she ended the long night, and Jon has no idea how.


	2. Chapter 2

“Arya,” he says helplessly. “Look at me,” he almost begs. She does, flicking her focus up to him without moving her head and he finds himself staring into eyes that have always reflected his own. He goes to ask her what happened, but he knows in some way and it isn’t the question that’s pressing at him, that’s clawing at him. Swallowing, he asks “How’d you do it?” A question with so many others with it, what happened to her, why did she hide this from her, is she okay.

She stares back at him, still, the way the dirt and sweat and blood on her face glints under the fires that still burn and the reflection of the snow the only thing, real sign she’s living. His frown grows as he waits, staring back at her, and realising he doesn’t know what to give her anymore. And then she looks to Bran, fully moving her head for the first time, enough that his hand falls to her shoulder and he sees the mark on her neck. A hand print, that reminds him of the one on Bran.

“She trained at the House of Black and White, with the Faceless Men.” Bran says from behind him, answering for her.

So many things go through his mind at once and he has no idea what to centre on. Faceless Men? But she can’t. She isn’t Faceless, she’s Arya, something he knows to his bones. But she’s just sought Bran’s reassurance, over his, she looked to Bran like she used to look to him. She feels like she needs Bran to be between them. And then he remembers that she also defended Sansa to him, right here in front of the heart tree. It had struck him, but she’d hugged him the same way he remembered, she’d clung to him the same way he remembered. She wanted to see Longclaw and she still carried Needle, had kept it all this time. So he let that change, that distance that it wasn’t just them anymore, go because everything else still said she was Arya. But he can’t let this go, he can’t do it again. Maybe she hadn’t really wanted him to days ago, maybe he’d missed all the signs of her needing him.

He doesn’t turn to Bran and he only acknowledges their brother spoke by slightly tilting his head in his direction; he refuses to look away from her. He refuses to not see her, now that he can, now that he’s realised he didn’t.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, only realising it’s like he’s out of breath, like the cold has taken it away, when he can only whisper.

Her eyes shift down briefly before back to his, that vulnerability still there. “You might not look at me the same way if you knew.”

He’s shaking his head before he answers her because it’s not possible. “What way?”

“Like I’m your little sister.” She says, staring at him and it cuts through him because he remembers, he remembers and she doesn’t know. She’s not his little sister, she’s not his sister at all, she never has been. With the truth of his birth, everything that ever mattered most to him has been stripped away. Ned Stark, the best person he knew, wasn’t really his father. And Arya, the most important thing in the world to him, the relationship he let define so much of who he was, that said that maybe he was worth something – isn’t his sister. How often he’d thought if she loved him, if she accepted him, if he shared familiarity and likeness with her, then maybe he wasn’t all bad, maybe there was a part of him that was worth something good; that part of him never really existed, not like he thought it did, not like Arya thought it did. And he can’t even tell her. Not now, not here.

He can feel Bran’s presence more than before, his knowledge, and hopes he won’t say anything. He needs to be the one to tell her. Bran seems to know everything that’s between them now, and everything they’re keeping from each other.

“Listen to me,” he starts, carefully tilting her head up with his thumb as he leans further down to meet her eyes as equally as he can. “Nothing will change what you mean to me, alright? Nothing,” He vows, promising as much as he can. It won’t, it can’t. No matter where what he knows now leads, no matter what it means for him, it will not take Arya away from him. He won’t let it; he won’t survive it if it does. They’ll be nothing left of him, nothing left of Jon Snow, if he loses his little sister. He’d tried in the Night’s Watch, he’d tried to let it go, but not her. He couldn’t. “It’s not possible.” He adds, staring into the grey eyes that tell him he’s still her family, he’s still a Stark. ‘Don’t forget that’, she’d told him. He won’t, he can’t.

“I stopped him.” She says after a moment, her eyes brightening as she starts to smile.

Jon laughs; she could always make him laugh. The one person. Relief and love and hope, that he hasn’t felt in so long stands right in front of him, and he feels it. “Yeah, I…I see that,” he chuckles, smiling back at her. He stands up, looking over her as lets his hand glide down to her shoulder instead, unwilling to let go of her. “You’re like father, a solider.” He says, feeling so proud of her. Just like she always wanted.

“Valar Dohaeris,” she says, as she too straightens. He frowns, shaking his head slightly in question. “All men must serve.” She explains. Jon’s heard enough men swear oaths enough times, and use it as a call to how to live a life that he recognises that’s what that is. Service, he thinks, he remembers that. And hers, to the Faceless Men? He wants to ask but not now, not when she might think he’s judging her. Her eyes are still too bright, her grin too smug; she’s too Arya to make him prioritise the worry. And killing the Night King, being here, it isn’t in service to anything, he’s sure. Nothing except their home, their people and the North, their family, because she wants to. It can come later, with the things he has to share too, the things that change him maybe as much as this does her, but like her, it won’t change his loyalty, or what and who he truly fights for.

He gives her a small smile, acknowledging what she’s said at least. “No wonder you weren’t jealous.” He lightly jokes with a raise of his eyebrows, gesturing towards the Valyrian Steel dagger still in her hand.

Lifting her hand, she turns it as she looks at it. He thinks maybe she’ll give it to him, show him it properly, but instead she slides it back into place on her left hip and he realises she’s had it on her this whole time.

“You’ll have to show me what else you can do with it.” He throws out, offering something, and telling her he wants to see whatever is new about her, whatever it is this life has taught her; that she doesn’t have to hide it from him anymore.

She smiles up at him and Jon pulls her close into a hug, careful of the cut on her head. He turns to Bran, encouraging Arya to move with him, keeping an arm around her as they step closer to their Brother.

They’re both okay, and Sansa will be safe in the crypt. Everything else they can start to rebuild, he thinks, as he takes in the silent chaos of the Godswood, the afterwards they can deal with together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> So yeah, the thing I changed is that I don't think Arya actually has Needle on her? Which makes me wonder where she put it because her without it is weird. But yeah, I changed it because I wanted to use it. I really hope we still get a good reaction scene.
> 
> I should get this finished tonight.
> 
> <https://secondfromtheright.tumblr.com/>


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